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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: HEAT v PACERSMay 26, 2014Erik SpoelstraMIAMI, FLORIDA: Game Four Q.  Erik, when you see play between Lance and LeBron back and forth, do you like that feistiness in the series, or to you is that just too much noise maybe? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: I don't think it has any impact on the outcome. I really don't. The further the series goes along, you just see more story lines. It still will be decided in between those four lines, and it will be about who plays better basketball. Q. Do you ask your players not to talk? Do you ever pull them on the side and say, let's not be part of that? Or do you just let them be who they are? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: No, unless it's affecting how we're playing, and I haven't seen that. Q. Coach, is it about the little things now, since you played one another so much and you really know what one another does team‑wise? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: That's part of it. That's the part you hope you're getting better at as the series goes on. For us, it's a big thing, and it still will be about that. Can we impose our identity? Which we have not been able to do over the course of a 48‑minute game the way we're capable of. That's in large credit to the way they play, and that's the challenge of this series. Q. You've staggered your rotation around LeBron or Dwyane remaining on the floor pretty much the entire game every game. Is that a conscious decision that you want to do in this game? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: I mean, they're a big part of what we're doing, yeah. And them playing at a high level is obviously very key for us. Q. You said you haven't been capable of playing the way you'd like to play. What things are missing? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Well, consistency right now. We'd like to get off to a better start. Certainly in the second quarter last game. Fourth quarter, we're finishing games with a great deal of energy and efficiency offensively, but we want to have a consistent identity where we're dictating the pace of this game, dictating the tempo and doing it on the defensive side first to get it more to our liking. And it takes an incredible effort, commitment, activity commitment for us to be able to do that, which would help our offense. But, again, this is what playoff competition's about. The reason we're not doing it is not only because of us. It's because of what they do, and they're very good at what they do. Q. Your defense has improved each game in this series, and you've talked about improving within a series. But where does the defense stand sort of in the grander scale of the whole season now compared to other points in the season and in regard to where you want to go? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: I would say, in general, it's more to our overall identity just in terms of activity and disruptiveness, but we're not there yet. We haven't put together a game, a full game the way we're capable of. Q. Is there any sort of mechanism, where you can almost incite a certain level of start to the game, a certain fast start? Are there things you have put in the past few minutes that have worked in the past where you can seem to get something going or is it strictly about execution and nothing else? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: No, everything. And, again, I keep on pointing to the competition. We have not been able to figure that part of it in the first six to eight minutes of the game, and that's the challenge. We're well aware of it. That doesn't guarantee you anything, obviously, getting off to a good start, but we'd like to get off to a good start to give us that consistency throughout the game. That's the energy, activity, we'd like to play off of. Would love to get the tempo right from the beginning more to our liking. But if it's not, then we've got to figure it out one way or another. So we'll see how it goes tonight. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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